Rush Limbaugh and “Barack, The Magic Negro”
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
By now you’ve probably heard about Rush Limbaugh’s “Barack, The Magic Negro” song. If not, you can view the video here and read the background on Media Matters.
My take on it? Limbaugh probably wanted an excuse to say “Negro.” As Media Matters points out, “Limbaugh continued to refer to Obama as the “Magic Negro” throughout the broadcast — 27 times, to be exact.” It was like someone handed him a free pass and he went buckwild.
Jill Tubman from Jack and Jill Politics broke it down thus:
This video manages to attack both Al Sharpton and Barack Obama at the same time — a real feat. It also seeks to portray Obama as a DC insider and “not authentically black”. Al Sharpton is portrayed as a greedy opportunist shouting incoherently through a megaphone. Most insulting is the “dialect” accent the Sharpton cariacature is given. Plenty of dem, dese and dose. Charming.
Media Matters does a great job in covering the Rush Limbaugh angle of the story. Like Don Imus, Limbaugh is racist for a living. The question is whether we’re all still ok with that here in America on our public airwaves or if it’s time to expose his lies and hatred and give him the boot.
Laina Dawes wants to know if anyone will call for Limbaugh to be fired?
In Imus’s case, general stereotypes about the black community were used to deflect his actions, as far too many people somehow felt that the actions of all African Americans were the root cause behind Imus’s usage of words. Freedom of speech and the perceived constraints of political correctness were debated. Is now the time to take a firm stand against all media figures who espouse racial ideology to incite the public, or will Imus take the fall for them? Is the firing of one radio host enough to quell the actions of others? In Limbaugh’s case, he accuses the “left” of creating the term “magic negro,” claiming that Sen. Ted Kennedy first used the term, therefore insinuating that “the left” are just, if not more racist than him…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Aaron wrote:
I called clear channel to ask them to fire him. I also called the local station that carries his show to ask that they stop carrying it. The programming manager at the station actually called me back! I guess he, like Limbaugh seem to think that because the LA Times said it first means that it’s ok for anyone to say it, and throw in all kinds of other racist ignorance too.
While I do wish Clear Channel would fire him, the problem is that one of the other media giants would probably pick him up immediately. It wouldn’t get him off the air, but at least it would send a message.
Posted 30 Apr 2007 at 12:00 pm ¶
berrybrowne wrote:
thanks aaron - i’m glad to hear it. why don’t we all also contact the “progressive” media watchdog and media policy groups and encourage them to speak up about this? too often they either hide behind the 1st amendment when racism is at issue, or - when they do speak up - they get hate mail from other “progressives.” try freepress.net, consumersunion.org, mediamatters.org, commoncause.org, etc.
Posted 30 Apr 2007 at 1:07 pm ¶
eric daniels wrote:
They are not going to fire Limbaugh and he is daring them to do just that by making fun of Obama. And he will have an excuse for that because he will say that the show is not “political” but satire of liberals and their followers and he has asserted that many times that he is not a social commentator but a humorist like Will Rogers. I would like to see him Savage, Bob Grant, Glenn Beck fired for their racist , sexist and homophobic commentary like Imus but they make hundreds of millions of dollars off his shows.
They are doing a counter measure by saying rap artists are just as bad as Imus so I expect that Snoop will lose his record deal and Black Women, feminists and others will focus on black male rappers thereby losing traction on “Shock Jocks” on the radio and otherwise.
Posted 30 Apr 2007 at 5:40 pm ¶
Koko wrote:
This was just sick. I can’t believe what the hell has been going on lately. Sometimes I wish I could just venture back into my fantasy world of ignorance about this society.
But I guess this is what it is gonna take to fight back. So I gotta stay strong…
:o(
Posted 30 Apr 2007 at 9:36 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
It sounds to me as if he’s being genuinely critical of the use of this racist expression. It’s partly because he disagrees with the columnist’s claim that Obama isn’t authentically black. Limbaugh is a minimalist about race enough to think that there’s no such thing as an authentic black culture. But he also thinks it’s insulting to white people to suggest that the only white people who will vote for Obama are doing so to assuage their consciences about white guilt. From what I could hear in the audio, it sounded as if every instance of his mentioning of the term (which he did not use once but mentioned a lot of times) was in derision of the article he was responding to and out of his sense of a double standard that people will call him on this as if he used the term when it was someone else who did that, and he was criticizing him.
I’m no Limbaugh fan, and I don’t agree with his dismissal of the possibility that white people will vote for Obama because of hidden racism in their attempt to assuage their white guilt, but I think in this instance he’s just genuinely being critical of the columnist he’s criticizing, with his repetitions of the phrase meant to illustrate how ludicrous the idea is that Obama is the Magic Negro. He did spend quite some time arguing that the idea was ridiculous before he kept repeating the phrase sarcastically.
Posted 01 May 2007 at 5:12 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
The stupid, it burns… yes, the insulting impression of Sharpton, and the constant use of the term…
But also the MISuse of the term. I thought “Magic Negro” referred to the stereotype/fantasy of the asexual black man who saves white people? Like, Will Smith’s character in the Legend of Bagger Vance?
Posted 01 May 2007 at 9:38 pm ¶
merq wrote:
Yes, Lyonside, that’s the original “Magic Negro” archetype. That LA Times columnist co-opted the term for his own purposes, perhaps because it “sounded witty.”
Posted 01 May 2007 at 11:56 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
Thanks merq! I was a bit confused when I heard the Magic Negro too. I was thinking Jules in Unbreakable. You have to wonder about someone who appropriates any phrase and starts to throw it around regardless of its meaning. He just wanted to use the word “negro”.
Posted 02 May 2007 at 8:01 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
OK, good to know I’m not nuts.
See, and that’s where I don’t even know where to begin… too often it seems like what is most offensive to me is never what’s picked up in the media. Michael Richards’ lynch-and-burn reference and Imus (or rather his producer’s) “jigaboos and wannabes” line offended me more.
I think it’s the misuse of terms that offends me, because it ends up proving the offender with wiggle room - that they “meant” it another way, that they didn’t know what it meant, that they didn’t mean it in a certain context, etc. It’s a vagueness that invites the infamous non-apology and plea of ignorance. It wraps the public debate up in semantic red tape, instead of a real debate about intent, historical meaning, and modern context.
I keep going back to Margaret Cho *best Valley accent*: “If you’re going to be racist, learn the terminology! Get like an English-to-Redneck dictionary!”
If you’re going to insult me, at least do me the courtesy of choosing the RIGHT insult. Sheesh…
Posted 02 May 2007 at 8:20 am ¶
Eddie G. Griffin wrote:
Great work is being done in the Afrospear. We concluded that “Magic Negro” was not a negative slur but rather a race-baiting tactic use by Limbaugh to trip Obama up.
Posted 11 May 2007 at 2:19 pm ¶